Portrait of a Lady on Fire: A Refreshing Portrait of Lesbianism and Womanhood
Few films can compare to Céline Sciamma’s scenic and terse Portrait of a Lady on Fire in their ability to craft a compelling redefinition of an identity. Set on the rocky shores of an 18th century Brittany island, Sciamma’s 2019 tour de force centers around the blossoming romance between Marianne, a portrait painter, and the aristocrat, Héloïse, whose arranged marriage portrait she must paint. Portrait of a Lady on Fire redefines what it means to be lesbian with piercing clarity, cleverly and assertively defying heteronormative stereotypes of lesbian women on screen. Its visually mesmerizing and heart wrenching story has earned the film numerous accolades including the Queer Palm and Best Screenplay awards at the Cannes Film Festival. Such critical acclaim is unsurprising given what makes the film feel so modern despite its historical setting–a defiance of expectations about the lesbian identity in film, reaffirming it as its own identity without drawing comparisons to straight identity, and an identity that is, for once, not objectified as sexual content for viewers.
Given that women are seen as objects of the male gaze, it is often the case that any sexual content between two women on screen will cater to the pleasure of male viewers, subjecting the women to the gazes of anonymous masses. This is evident in the popularity of lesbian porn among straight men, with the term “lesbian” being the most popular search term in the majority of American states (Khazan). Lesbian films such as Blue is the Warmest Color have been criticized for graphic sex scenes (Silman) that play to the appeal of lesbian sex on screen. These films are essentially pornographic eye candy for audiences with no interest in genuine lesbian relationships with any depth whatsoever.
There is thus a clear cultural fixation on the objectification of women as sexual content for avid viewers. It is precisely this expectation about lesbians on screen that Sciamma defies assertively in Portrait of a Lady on Fire by building up to what the audience expects is a sex scene, but only turns out to be a clever euphemism showing Marianne’s armpit rather than her crotch. In refusing to create yet another lesbian film featuring graphic sex that objectifies women for anonymous viewers, Sciamma forces viewers to rethink their expectations of lesbian women on screen and reaffirms that they are not solely there for the audience’s visual pleasure.
Beyond challenging the expectation of a lesbian romance as sexual content, Portrait of a Lady on Fire also refuses to depict being lesbian as an alternative to the expected default straight identity. Héloïse’s arranged engagement to her future husband is only briefly mentioned, and Sophie’s pregnancy subplot does not depict any interaction with men on screen. It is precisely this absence of comparison to heterosexuality that encourages acceptance for homosexuality not as the “other,” but as its own standalone identity.
This unflinching representation of a queer identity which refuses to define it in terms of the widely accepted heterosexual norm is particularly meaningful when we consider other queer representation in film. So many films such as Blue is the Warmest Color, Moonlight, and Brokeback Mountain depict queer people struggling to accept their identities, but these depictions accentuate the otherness of being queer rather than encourage its acceptance by normalizing it. By contrast, in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Héloïse and Marianne are not depicted experiencing a struggle to come to terms with their lesbian identity at all. Their story is not a queer love story — it is just a love story. There is no struggle to accept their lesbian identities because there shouldn’t be one at all.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire, in refusing to define lesbianism relative to heterosexuality, also separates itself from other stereotypes about lesbian relationships that stem from a heteronormative perspective on relationships. In a society that has established heterosexuality as the norm, lesbian relationships are typically framed using heterosexual qualities; for instance, it is expected for someone to take on the role of the man and the other to be the woman in the relationship when the whole point of being lesbian is that there is no man.
The film defies this male/female power dynamic that is expected of same-sex relationships particularly staunchly. Whereas contrast in fictional heterosexual relationships is typically shaped by the tension between the characters’ genders, Sciamma creates a balance of contrast and homogeneity in Marianne and Héloïse’s homosexual relationship through visual means. While there is a complementary dichotomy between blonde and brunette leads wearing green and red dresses, the two women stand at equal heights, neither looking down upon the other, and their dialogue highlights one another’s subtle but profound intellect.
Even their continued use of “vous,” the French formal “you,” demonstrates a sense of equality despite its typical use in respectful contexts by inferiors to address their superiors. By addressing each other with “vous”, neither woman talks down to the other. This mutual respect in the “vous” form is an expression of the equality that the two lead actresses, Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel, purposely brought to the fore–an equality which they explain is “much more exciting” (HeyUGuys) than the power imbalance created by films that base eroticism on domination. This defies lesbian stereotypes because inherent in the expectation of a male/female dynamic is an expectation for a power dynamic in a lesbian couple, which is stereotypically composed of a dominant masc and submissive femme.
A major facet of this power imbalance is the viewer-object imbalance, which Sciamma uses cleverly to question established norms about the male gaze. An explicit equality between the two women challenges the expectation of a power imbalance and thus the typical viewer/object relationship. Because Héloïse refuses to sit for her marriage portrait, Marianne must paint her from memory based on her observations from their daily walks by the cliffs. Their relationship here is defined by a look–specifically, Marianne’s gaze upon Héloïse as the subject of her portrait is an objectifying one. After all, Marianne is painting the very image of Héloïse that a man must look at and approve of. Her work requires looking upon Héloïse with the male gaze.
As Laura Mulvey explains in “Visual Pleasure,” the roles in the act of looking have been “split between active/male and passive/female.” Men have always been credited as the creators of art, almost completely erasing the equally important role of women in creation. A woman in art is thus reduced to a silent, passive muse, “tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning” (Mulvey), leaving only the man the power to actively look and to create. This creator/muse relationship stands as an extension of the typical male/female dynamic in a heterosexual relationship, from which Sciamma is eager to distance the film.
Indeed, as Haenel, the actress who plays Héloïse, explains, her character moves from “being an object” that must be painted “to being a subject” in active artmaking (Deschanel), a change which is reflected in the film’s framing. During painting scenes, Marianne’s face is always shot close-up as she works, whereas Héloïse’swhole body is framed in the shot as she poses, framing her from a more exposing vantage point. But when Marianne says she would hate to be in Héloïse’splace as the object of the artist’s gaze, Héloïse asks “when you look at me, who am I looking at?,” turning the viewer/object dynamic on its head. The next shots frame Marianne as the object of Héloïse’s gaze; rather than showing Marianne’s face up-close, the screen now reveals her whole body standing beside the canvas, framed in a more exposed way as if she were now vulnerable to an objectifying gaze. The camera then zooms on Héloïse’s face to frame it as if she were the viewer looking at Marianne.
By suggesting that neither one has the power to be the sole looker and thus sole objectifier in the relationship, Portrait of a Lady on Fire defies heteronormative expectations of dominator/ dominated, instead establishing a power balance and thus a sense of equality between the two lovers. This sense of equality is most explicitly shown in the scene in which the two women, the artist and subject side by side, literally complete the portrait together. Portrait’s depiction of the muse herself taking up the brush argues that the female model traditionally considered a silent muse actually plays an equally important role in artmaking, once again defying the expected power imbalance.
Interestingly, Sciamma employs the same techniques that she used to defy stereotypes about lesbian relationships to redefine womanhood. Just as Portrait of a Lady on Fire depicts queerness without using heterosexuality as a comparison, it also explores womanhood without using men as a comparison. Indeed, throughout the film’s two-hour runtime, men are only on screen for a few minutes, none are named, and they collectively speak about five lines.
This is not to argue in favor of erasing men from the screen, but rather to center women on it for once. In the same way that the film asks what it means to be lesbian when it is not defined relative to being straight, it also asks what it means to be a woman when womanhood is not defined relative to manhood. Because Héloïse and Marianne’s relationship is not confined to the typical heteronormative dynamics such as inequality in power and objectification, there was greater freedom to “investigate all the possibilities in life, art, and sex life,” in Haenel’s words (HeyUGuys). Exploring such possibilities would not be possible if lesbianism had been framed merely as the “other” to heterosexuality; the absence of heterosexuality in Sciamma’s reframing of lesbian identity was necessary to define it with complexity and greater clarity.
The same reasoning can be applied to the way womanhood is defined in Portrait of a Lady on Fire. With its complete lack of male characters, womanhood is defined as its own identity rather than being depicted as the lesser “other” of male identity. The film demonstrates that when women are not defined in terms of degrees of inferiority to men — when they are not vying for scraps of power in a patriarchal world — power hierarchies among women break down. That power hierarchy only exists to serve a man; he requires a subordinate wife, to whom a craftswoman is subordinate, to whom a servant is subordinate.
In Portrait of a Lady on Fire, there is no man of the house to whom the women must obey, which is why, between the three women, there is such a tangible, refreshing feeling of equality that runs through the film. Héloïse, an aristocrat, Marianne, a painter, and Sophie a servant, coexist in a harmony that develops beautifully in the film’s lack of male presence. This equality is reflected in the film’s frequent framing of shots of the three women as equals, such as at the dinner table, by the fireplace during a card game, and in the grass fields walking at equal heights and paces. Héloïse even changes into a blue dress in scenes featuring the trio so that the colors of the three women’s clothing are the primary colors, which form a harmonious trifecta indicative of equality rather than a power hierarchy.
These build an entrancing vision of what it means to be a woman in the absence of men to whom to be compared. Womanhood can be freeing, supportive, and egalitarian if only womanhood is given its own space within which to exist. As was the case with redefining a homosexual identity, the absence of men in Sciamma’s reframing of womanhood was necessary to define it with complexity and greater clarity.
In fact, the creation of this film itself is a statement for what women can do in the absence of men as creators of art; Portrait of a Lady on Fire was written and directed by Céline Sciamma, a woman, produced by Benedicte Couvreur, a woman, shot by Claire Mathon, a woman, and of course stars female actresses, Noémie Merlant, Adèle Haenel, and Luàna Bajrami. Even the oil paintings created for the film were painted by Hélène Delmaire, a female artist. When they aren’t barred from creating art as they have been historically, women also have the potential to be creators in their own right. The film’s very existence demonstrates that it is necessary for women to have their own space within which to be defined rather than a spare space defined from the cutout of men to even come close to capturing all of the nuances of womanhood.
It can be argued that Portrait of a Lady on Fire falls short in its realism in depicting lesbian identity, with its complete lack of a journey to self-acceptance of queer identity, an essential aspect of many queer people’s relationship with their own sexuality. It can also be said that an 18th century period piece completely devoid of men depicting a small, egalitarian utopia on a remote island is idyllic.
Neither of these criticisms, however, make the film any less important in its depiction of this vision. What makes film such a powerful facet of mass media is not just its ability to tell untold realities to the screens of millions, but also its ability to shape our collective dreams. As Joan Didion argues in her essay “John Wayne: A Love Story,” John Wayne films are far from realistic depictions of western life, and yet his films had the astonishing power to fill the collective American dreamspace: “when John Wayne rode through my childhood, and perhaps through yours, he determined forever the shape of certain of our dreams” (Didion). His films have become the vision of a certain mid 20th century dream of self-sufficiency and justice out west — a collective fiction. A film like Portrait of a Lady on Fire that shares an egalitarian, non-patriarchal fiction in which one does not have to struggle to accept being queer may go a long way in shaping the kind of world we dream of.
Works Cited
Didion, Joan. “John Wayne: A Love Story.” Slouching towards Bethlehem, 4th Estate, London, 2017.
Khazan, Olga. “Why Do so Many Men Watch Lesbian Porn?” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 16 June 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/03/straight-men-and-lesbian-porn/472521/.
Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. 1999.
“Noémie Merlant & Adèle Haenel on their scintillating relationship in Portrait of a Lady on Fire.” Youtube, uploaded by HeyUGuys, 24 February 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hvFFCl1oQ4
Silman, Anna. “A Brief History of All the Drama Surrounding Blue Is the Warmest Color.” Vulture, 24 Oct. 2013, http://www.vulture.com/2013/10/timeline-blue-is-the-warmest-color-controversy.html.
“What Portrait of a Lady on Fire Tells Us About “the Gaze.” Youtube, uploaded by Broey Deschanel, 8 February 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMUC584ppNQ
Note: Originally written in Spring 2023 as part of the Aesthetics Intro Writing course at USC.
